SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO – After six years of bruising school board races dominated by two warring parent factions, Capistrano Unified is right back where it started.

Tuesday’s election is shaping up to be another bitterly fought battle by the same two political groups, mainly over how to move the school district forward and keep it fiscally solvent amid unprecedented funding challenges. Capistrano is O.C.’s second-largest school district, with about 53,000 students.

Spending on the race, while not on pace to break 2010’s record-setting tallies, already has hit $247,354, according to a Register analysis of campaign finance records.

The lion’s share – about 41 cents of every dollar – has come from the district’s teachers union, just as it did in 2010. An additional 16 cents of every dollar were spent by a group aligned closely with the union, Capistrano Unified Children First.

The teachers union, which reported spending $101,093 through Oct. 29, said voters want to know who teachers are supporting.

“The only thing money does is help get the word out to voters,” said Vicki Soderberg, president of the Capistrano Unified Education Association. “Parents and communities look to teachers; they really feel teachers know best.”

In 2010, spending by the district’s two chief financial backers topped $374,000, with the union outpacing its chief rival by a 16 to 1 margin. Thousands more were spent by the candidates themselves.

“There’s still a hell of a lot of money being spent, and it’s the union by far that is spending the most,” said parent Wayne Tate of Mission Viejo, head of the Hold CUSD Accountable group, which has endorsed a slate of candidates running against the union-backed candidates.

“Do I think the massive amount of money can have undue influence? Of course,” Tate said. “They can inundate the public with whatever message they want, and it’s up to the candidates to get out a counter message.”

The district’s teachers union has endorsed three candidates – incumbents John Alpay and Gary Pritchard, plus Amy Hanacek – and Children First is backing the same three candidates, plus Carol McCormick. The reported spending by the four candidates through Oct. 20 was a combined $31,972, or 13 cents of every dollar spent in the race.

Meanwhile, the Hold CUSD Accountable group – successor to the conservative, anti-union Committee to Reform CUSD – is backing candidates Jim Reardon, Steve Lang and William Perkins. Their combined spending through Oct. 20 was $44,864, or 18 cents of every dollar spent on the race, according to campaign finance reports.

The Hold CUSD Accountable group itself isn’t a political action committee and reported no spending; the Reform Committee reported spending $2,990, about 1 cent of every dollar spent in the race.

“If anything, I’m surprised by the intensity of their continued involvement,” said parent Fran Sdao of Mission Viejo, president of Children First. “They’re harping on a lot of the same issues. What we’ve brought to the board are discussions at board meetings that are much, much, much more focused on education and instruction and positive outcomes. We’re hoping that continues.”

Philosophical contrasts on display

What’s different about the Nov. 6 election is that, for the first time, Capistrano’s 220,000 registered voters have seen the governing philosophies and ideologies of each side – from the dais itself.

Over the past few years, each side has had an opportunity to control the board via a majority voting bloc. And perhaps nowhere are their differences more evident than in how each side handled the issue of teacher pay cuts.

The first to tackle pay cuts were the trustees backed by the Committee to Reform CUSD, which seized control of the board in 2008 and fought aggressively for deep, permanent pay cuts for teachers and other employees. Eventually, the Reform board unilaterally imposed a 10.1 percent cut on teachers, leading to a five-day teacher strike in spring 2010. About a third of that pay cut has since been given back to teachers.

Two years after the Reform trustees came to power, trustees backed by the Capistrano Unified Children First group wrestled away the majority voting bloc. The bloc signed off earlier this year on a pay-cut plan agreed upon by teachers that called for either 6 percent or 12.9 percent pay cuts, depending on the severity of state funding cuts.

Unlike the plan crafted by the Reform trustees, this plan could lop off up to three weeks from the 2012-13 school year – the maximum now allowed by the state is four weeks – and has raised class sizes across all grade levels by an average of 1-1/2 students each.

(By contrast, the Reform plan contained no class-size increases, and the five days it cut were spread across two years, at a time when the state was allowing districts to cut up to five days per year.)

“Have things gotten better between 2010 and now? The answer, objectively, is no – kids have suffered relatively greater consequences,” Tate said. “The Reform board was trying to make certain structural changes to the budget. Were they perfect? No, but there are just some really tough issues that need to be addressed.”

Children First and the teachers union, meanwhile, have cited revitalized teacher morale as evidence things have gotten better in Capistrano since 2010, along with a number of other changes they’ve observed.

“Everything has been hugely improved,” said parent Erin Kutnick of San Juan Capistrano, part of the Children First group. “We’ve not front-page news anymore, we’ve had the same superintendent for over two years, we’ve had a school board that can stay focused on making good decisions, and we don’t have standing-room-only crowds and sheriff’s patrols at school board meetings.”

But, Kutnick added, “unfortunately some candidates want to take things back to where they were in 2006 and 2008.”

Political antics include fake URLs

As in elections past, the Capistrano Unified race this year has been marred by reports of stolen campaign signs, blatantly deceptive and false public statements, and other political antics.

The Orange County Department of Education demanded earlier this month that Hold CUSD Accountable candidate Steve Lang revise his campaign literature, after he wrote that his political opponent voted in favor of “reckless deficit spending.”

The department did not object to the statement itself, only to the fact that Lang cited the county department as the source of the statement, according to the Oct. 19 letter from attorney Ronald Wenkart.

The antic that’s made the biggest waves this year, though, has been the creation of misleading website URLs that automatically re-direct visitors to the opposition’s websites.

AOL’s Patch.com reported earlier this month that incumbent John Alpay acknowledged purchasing HoldCUSDAccountable.com, a fake URL that at one point redirected visitors to Children First’s website. The real Hold CUSD Accountable group is at HoldCUSDAccountable.org.

Alpay did not return a phone call seeking comment.

Other fake URLs that have surfaced this year include JulieCollier.com (the name of a district activist) and ParentsAdvocateLeague.com (the name of Collier’s coalition). In each of the reported cases, the URLs redirected to sites like Children First.

“It’s hard to say if damage was done to our campaign,” Tate said. “All I can say is it’s shocking that it occurred. It speaks to some desperate desire to win at all costs, because I cannot rationally, logically or legally understand why they did what they did.”

Children First and the teachers union have downplayed the fake URLs, noting that only voters who mistakenly typed in the wrong URL would have been redirected.

“I can’t imagine it would have an impact on an election like this,” Sdao said. “In this day and age, it seems to be not an uncommon thing for people to do who have more time on their hands than I do. … When you sign up to run in CUSD, this kind of thing seems to be what goes on.”

Kutnick, who ran for school board in 2008, noted the fake URLs were “nowhere near as personal and nasty” as what happened to her. During Kutnick’s school board campaign, not only did someone create a URL called EKutnik4Kids.com to mimic her own Kutnik4Kids.com, but also parodied Kutnick on the site by blogging as her.

“What’s happening now is pretty benign,” Kutnick said. “No one is writing anything nasty about anyone, putting up lies, smearing their families.”

Still, she acknowledged, “when you run for a public office, you leave yourself vulnerable to that stuff. It’s unfortunate because it deters really good people from getting involved in politics, and that just prevents us from having the best choices in the end to represent us.”

Campaign spending

Capistrano Unified school board candidates are running in one of seven voting areas this year, following voter approval of a 2010 measure that eliminated at-large school district elections.

AREA 1

Karin Schnell (no slate): Raised $2,577; spent $2,058

Amy Hanacek (Children First): Raised $4,081; spent $3,510

AREA 2

Carol McCormick (Children First): Raised $4,768; spent $3,881

Jim Reardon (Hold CUSD Accountable): Raised $17,297; spent $15,758

Michele Taylor-Bible (no slate): Received and/or spent less than $1,000

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